2018 Dates Announced!

Yale Cyber Leadership Forum - April 2018

Bridging the Divide: Law, Technology, and Business of Cybersecurity

April 7-8, 2018

The scope and scale of global cyber threats confronting lawyers, technologists, and business leaders continues to expand at an alarming rate.

— Oona Hathaway

The second iteration of the Yale Cyber Leadership Forum will be held on April 7-8, 2018. A collaboration among Yale Law School’s Center for Global Legal Challenges and Yale’s Office of International Affairs, the Forum brings together leaders in law, technology, policy, business, and academia to discuss the most critical cybersecurity challenges. Oona Hathaway, the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, serves as faculty director, and the Forum is team-taught by Yale professors from across the university.

“Since last year’s Yale Cyber Leadership Forum, the scope and scale of global cyber threats confronting lawyers, technologists, and business leaders continues to expand at an alarming rate,” said Hathaway. “Yet it remains difficult to communicate and respond to cybersecurity challenges across these diverse disciplinary, professional, and technical boundaries. Our Forum is aimed at ‘Bridging the Divide’: helping business leaders, lawyers, and academics understand the technology behind cyber threats, while at the same time, ensuring that cyber specialists appreciate the legal, policy, and market constraints that businesses and governments face.”

The Yale Cyber Leadership Forum’s curriculum draws on lessons learned in a Hewlett Foundation-funded cross-disciplinary course, “The Law and Technology of Cyber Conflict,” co-taught between Yale Law School and the Department of Computer Science in fall 2016, which aimed at spanning the disciplinary gaps between future lawyers and computer scientists. In addition, global management consulting firm McKinsey & company serves as a knowledge partner to the Forum, integrating McKinsey’s extensive knowledge of best practices in cybersecurity with Yale’s scholarly expertise and distinguished practitioner alumni.

This year, the Forum aligns with the annual conference of Yale’s Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy, which will feature a conversation with The Honorable Dr. Henry Kissinger and former Alphabet Chairman and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, focused on current and future threats from cyberwarfare and artificial intelligence. Forum participants who opt to come to Yale a day early are invited to attend a special university-wide discussion with Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Schmidt on April 6, before the start of the Forum on April 7.